Adventure Capital is an Australian early-stage technology venture capital fund based in Melbourne, which invests in the areas of FinTech, HealthTech, IoT and SaaS. The Partners at Adventure Capital also operate the York Butter Factory co-working space, which helps connect high growth potential start-up businesses operating on a low capital base with large companies and other investors.

Their leadership has shaped an expansive ecosystem made up of multiple communities of enthusiasts, experts and entrepreneurs, providing not just funding and mentoring, as well as access to scalable value chains via its network of Fortune 1000 and ASX200 corporate partners.

“It’s all about great founding teams getting the support they need beyond the money,” says Stuart Richardson, Founder and Managing Partner of Adventure Capital. “Our ecosystem gives entrepreneurs a chance to thrive.”

Like many of the businesses it helps, Adventure Capital is lean. In fact, it had just two staff members to begin with, and now has six across Australia and Silicon Valley. Like most businesses the team initially used spreadsheets and email to organise their customer information. It was easy for things to slip through the cracks, as both their business and those businesses they invest in move fast and evolve.

Adventure Capital began using SalesforceIQ. It equips small businesses with a powerful CRM system driven by smart technology called relationship intelligence.

Adventure Capital now keeps all its client information, from fledgling start-ups and multinational corporate partners alike in SalesforceIQ. The system allows team members to assign clients to different lists based on the industry they’re in, what stage of the product-market fit they’re at, discussion around metrics and more.

“Compared to our old spreadsheet approach, discovering SalesforceIQ has been like discovering the wheel,” says Jason Lim, Associate at Adventure Capital. “It’s faster, smoother, and we’re able to see things that were previously too easy to overlook.”

Shelley Laslett joined York Butter Factory as its new General Manager of Innovation. SalesforceIQ made getting up to speed quick and straightforward. She could read information about related clients, taking advantage of the way SalesforceIQ records all past interactions with each customer. So when she spoke to colleagues, she already had the details and could focus on what they might do together in the future.

Adventure Capital helps to match the problems faced by established businesses with solutions designed by start-up companies in its growing portfolio, and within the iconic York Butter Factory. This means understanding each party in detail, to see what they might have in common.

SalesforceIQ automatically compares investors and start-ups to see which might go well together.

Lim says that one of SalesforceIQ’s most useful features is its ability to automatically integrate information from other sources, including emails and calendar entries.

With just six employees looking after more than 100 businesses, it could be difficult for them to keep track of their customer communications. SalesforceIQ has removed the confusion by automatically alerting when an email or call is due for a reply.

“We’re in contact much more frequently, and that means we’re always up to date on what our fast-moving client start-ups are doing,” he says.

Lim credits SalesforceIQ with improving communication inside the office too. By making communications transparent, team members don’t need to constantly update each other on their projects or congest inboxes with CC and BCC.

“We’re a company that focuses on high-tech start-ups,” says Jason. “So we wanted a high-tech CRM solution. That’s what we found with SalesforceIQ and I can see us using it for a long time yet.”

This wine curator identifies its best customers by cleaning up dirty data so it can zero in on new opportunities. With Salesforce, its sales productivity jumped 30%, and campaign delivery rates rose 9%.